HARRISBURG, Pa. (CBS) - The Corbett administration has officially submitted its proposal to the federal government to use Medicaid funds to extend health insurance to a half million working Pennsylvanians.

Governor Corbett proposes to use federal Medicaid money to subsidize private health insurance for adults who don’t currently have coverage. Welfare Secretary Beverly Mackereth says the state and federal administrations have already been talking informally.

“We will be talking with them regularly which we’ve been doing since last April. And this really starts the formal negotiation period,” she said. “So they’ll be getting back to us saying, you know, ‘Yes we like this… no, we have to change that.’”

Mackereth says one change to the Corbett plan since it was first rolled is that enrollees in the first year won’t be penalized for not complying with work search requirements. She acknowledges that those employment-related parts of the plan are the ones to which the feds are most likely to object.